This content was published on March 14, 2017 11:56 AMMar 14, 2017 - 11:56

The newest drone the Swiss Post will test for use in making deliveries.

(post.ch)

Drones will be used this month to start delivering laboratory samples such as urine tests between two hospitals in canton Ticino as part of tests carried out by Swiss Post. The national post office hopes the service will be fully operational next year.

Swiss Post said in a statement on Tuesday that it plans to start a test phase from mid-March for the first commercial use of drones with the EOC hospital group in canton Ticino.

Delivery drones will carry lab samples between two EOC hospitals in Lugano – the Ospedale Italiano and the Ospedale Civico – which are located about 600 metres apart.

The Federal Office of Civil Aviation is due to inspect the drones and the first test flights this month before granting the necessary authorisations. The drones must prove that they meet strict safety, practicality and reliability requirements.

Swiss Post first tested the use of drones in 2015 together with Californian manufacturer Matternet, a firm primarily focused on developing airborne options for health care in developing countries. Other countries such as Germany and France have also recently carried out similar drone delivery tests.

Not a replacement

With this project, Swiss Post is following in the footsteps of Amazon, which is already considering delivering packages by drone and has received the green light to test delivery flights in the US.

In December, Amazon successfully completed its first drone delivery as part of its Prime Air initiative. The package was delivered to a customer in the Cambridge area of Britain on December 7, making it to the person’s house just 13 minutes after the order was placed.

Swiss Post has also started experimenting with other futuristic delivery methods. In September 2016 it sent small, autonomous robots out onto city pavements and pedestrian zones to deliver packages in a series of tests authorised by Switzerland’s Federal Roads Office. The tests, conducted in the Swiss capital Bern as well as Köniz (Bern) and Biberist (Solothurn), are the result of a partnership with British company Starship Technologies.

Swiss Post said the robots were designed to deliver special mailings, including packages that require flexible and rapid local delivery. They could also be used in the future for same-day and same-hour delivery of food or medicine. Similar commercial tests were launched with partners in Britain and Germany last year.

Swiss Post insists that the robots are not intended to replace traditional package distribution practices. Instead, they represent Swiss Post’s desire to adapt to the evolving online shopping market and to compete with increasing numbers of foreign logistics services.

swissinfo.ch/sb

Neuer Inhalt

Horizontal Line

subscription form

Form for signing up for free newsletter.

Sign up for our free newsletters and get the top stories delivered to your inbox.

There is one comment on this article.

Copyright

All rights reserved. The content of the website by swissinfo.ch is copyrighted. It is intended for private use only. Any other use of the website content beyond the use stipulated above, particularly the distribution, modification, transmission, storage and copying requires prior written consent of swissinfo.ch. Should you be interested in any such use of the website content, please contact us via contact@swissinfo.ch.

As regards the use for private purposes, it is only permitted to use a hyperlink to specific content, and to place it on your own website or a website of third parties. The swissinfo.ch website content may only be embedded in an ad-free environment without any modifications. Specifically applying to all software, folders, data and their content provided for download by the swissinfo.ch website, a basic, non-exclusive and non-transferable license is granted that is restricted to the one-time downloading and saving of said data on private devices. All other rights remain the property of swissinfo.ch. In particular, any sale or commercial use of these data is prohibited.